This is my first shot at the world of gentoo/sabayon and I have done some searching but could use some guidance on the make.conf file. I would like to optimize it for my system. The system is a 2.8 P4 with HT, 2.5 GB ram. Here are my questions.

1) Would this be a good entry for my CFLAGS?

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe" or should it be CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -pipe"

2) What would be best for MAKEOPTS?

MAKEOPTS="-j2" or since this is a HT processor could I use MAKEOPTS="-j3"

3) CHOST="i586-pc-linux-gnu" is what's in the default make.conf, would CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" make more sense or does it really matter?

Thanks for all replies in advance, I am having a lot of fun with Sabayon so far.

(2) I had a box at work that had a P4 HT processor. I was surprised at how good of a job it did at acting like a twin processor system. You could go with MAKEOPTS="-j3", and get better performance from compiling. You may also want to keep MAKEOPTS="-j2" and have a slightly more responsive system when you are emerge'ing and doing other things at the same time.

(3) Changing CHOST is an advanced topic. You need to do a lot of homework before you start playing with CHOST. Save that one for later.